Cold Victory
by JadziaKathryn
Summary: From the Borg, she salvages a cold victory.


Disclaimer: It should come as no shock that I don't own anything or anyone you recognize.

A/N: The inspiration for this came loosely from the movie "Swing Kids," which I highly recommend.

**Cold Victory**

She fired her phaser. The Borg attack had been sudden, and the _USS Jefferson _was unprepared to fight the cyborg nemesis they were summoned to battle. Being in the botanical bay, their weapons locker was minimally stocked. T'Kel, from her place near the door, hadn't even been able to fend off the invading Borg with her first shot. By the time the Borg got to the botanical bay, apparently low on their hierarchy of priorities, they'd adapted to all the tricks standard phasers could offer. Now T'Kel stood motionless as nanoprobes began to alter her.

The phaser was set to kill, but the same drone that had assimilated T'Kel advanced; the phaser was useless. She didn't see any way out of the situation. The _Jefferson_ was swarming with Borg drones, more being created by the minute as Starfleet officers were assimilated.

Independence was prized in her family, a value she'd always taken to heart. The thought of losing her individuality was frightening in itself, but to become a soulless shell, a killing machine whose knowledge could be used against the rest of the Federation – that was a worse fate. Assimilation meant that she would be without remorse, without compassion, without anything that made her life worth anything.

The Borg were ruthless. They didn't care for her; they wanted her knowledge and her body to use in an endless search for perfection that wrecked havoc on billions of lives. She was powerless to stop. The drone advanced, and her last phaser shot didn't mean a thing to it.

She watched it stop to scan a plant. Her prized Orion cucumber vine, in fact. They were demanding plants, and the drone could not possibly understand the care and frustrations that she associated with the vine. To her, it was a labor of love. The drone scanned it, seeing nothing but a compilation of carbon-based cells.

It walked towards her, and she realized that once the drone had been like her. It scanned her despite another useless phaser shot and her retreat behind a desk. She knew that this would be the end. The entire crew had succumbed to the Borg.

"No! Don't do this." It circled around the desk, knocking T'Kel's neatly placed research padds off in the process. She circled. The drone circled.

The drone that used to be T'Kel strode over. "Resistance is futile," said the former botanist in a voice that was too many voices to count. T'Kel had always had a green tint to her skin, but now it was a sickly grey-green punctuated with metallic implants. "We are the Borg."

"T'Kel, you aren't one of them. You aren't a monster." She understood, then, why Captain Picard couldn't really be faulted for the whole disastrous battle. He was being used against his own people, and had no say in the matter. None of them did.

The original drone spoke in the same multi-voice. "We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own."

They circled, but in trying to avoid the drone who used to be T'Kel, she was unable to avoid the first drone.

Tubules shot out from its knuckles. She watched in horror, seeing the nanoprobes in them. They would destroy her. She would become a monster; what had happened to T'Kel would happen to her. It was too horrible for words.

The skin on her neck was pierced. It hurt a little, but not as much as the torture of knowing what would become of her. Her parents would no doubt wonder about her, always nagged by the thought that their daughter had been turned into a mindless, soulless killing machine. She would never get to take her niece to Mars as she'd promised.

Her blood grew warmer, and it felt as though tiny knives were raking along all her internal organs. She tried to pull away from the drone, but the tubules retracted and she knew that her fate was sealed. Agony tore through her muscles as the nanoprobes burrowed into them. She could feel her body being torn apart and remade as Borg.

And yet there was still hope. Clutched in her hand was the phaser, and the drone had moved on to scan the equipment, secure in the knowledge that she would soon join the Collective. Her mind rebelled, although her thoughts were getting muddier.

She focused. Her brain ached as it tried to fend off the nanoprobes. The phaser in her hand was a welcome comfort as she lifted it. It took all she had to turn her wrist, as her body raged a losing battle and her mind was being devoured.

"I," she croaked, lifting the tip of the phaser a bit. It was growing harder to remember things now, and she didn't know how long she had been in limbo, neither human nor Borg. Probably not days, but it could have been hours or mere seconds. A dull humming throbbed at the back of her consciousness. "…am…" she continued, only to forget her own name. She could not longer remember. The nanoprobes ceased to hurt, and she could no longer remember exactly why she fought so hard. All she could recall was that she had to resist, and that she had once had a name. Who she was and why she fought were lost to her, but she knew that she must fight. There was yet a cold victory to be salvaged. "…free."

She fired and fell to the deck. For a moment in time, the nanoprobes tried to bring life back to the body they were in, but it was too severely damaged.

The Collective mind noted the loss of a potential drone. It had been an intelligent mind with potential to enrich the hive mind, but the body was weak. There was nothing to be gained from it. The last words were noted in passing by Five of Six, Primary Adjunct of Cube one-zero-five-nine-four-seven-three. It claimed freedom. The Collective did not deem this assertion worthy of processing.


End file.
